Category Archives: Uncategorized

Before picking up Christopher McDougall’s Born To Run, I was training for my first 5K. I finished the book last night with my right leg elevated and an ice pack on my knee and all I wanted to do was go out and run an ultramarathon.

Born To Run starts with McDougall’s quest to run without pain and it leads him to the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico. The tribe is the keeper of a lost art — running for hundreds of miles without rest or injury and loving every minute of it.

Whether you are a runner or not, it’s a fascinating and funny tale about runners and the art (and science) of running. While the book builds up to the greatest 50-mile race you never heard of, I really enjoyed the science part. McDougall takes you to the research labs of Harvard seeking an answer to the…

When one thinks of the Nazi killing machine one tends to imagine armies of jackbooted soldiers marching inexorably from one torched and plundered village to the next, herding people together for transportation to the camps or, perhaps, to be hastily murdered in freshly dug pits.

There was another section of Nazi society just as culpable, though to this day they have somehow evaded the cold scrutiny that their actions deserve. To put it mildly, the women of the Third Reich have a lot to answer for.

Thirteen million of them were actively engaged in work for the Nazi party. Half a million of them went eastwards, to Poland and the Ukraine, in the wake of the German advance and they went in many guises

They were secretaries who typed orders to kill, nurses who euthanised patients or aborted unborn children with ‘defects’. They were wives and mothers, willing to ensure…

First “misread” word of 2014:

Emma => enema.

First typo in 2014:

Updated => unpated.

Pretty sure I know what enema means.

Let’s say no more about it.

But what could “unpated” mean?

Since “pate” means the crown of the head, “unpated” must mean:

“One who has had the top of one’s head lopped off.”

I imagine it’s like cracking the top off a soft-boiled egg, in one deft thwack.

(If you’re thinking about “pâté” right now, don’t. Just… don’t.)

Let’s use “unpated” in a sentence, shall we? Perhaps in a hard-boiled detective novel. One which begins: “It was the best of crimes, it was the worst of crimes…” Here we go:

“The victim was unpated. Defenestrated.”

Now, let’s see what the Internet has to say about “unpated”:

• WordFind graciously provides an anagram: “unadept.” (Are they trying to tell me something?)
• Wiktionary kindly asks: “Do you mean ‘update’? (Yes…

I don’t go to church, but I do eat alone in restaurants.  There is a similarity in the experiences – the quiet lighting, the solemn way the maitre d’ ushers me to my seat, the hushed whisper of his crepe-soled shoes, the smoothing of my skirt before I sit, the brief smiles at faces turned momentarily toward me.

Some people detest eating alone but I like it.  Things smell better when you eat alone – there are no words building up across the table, keeping the aromas pushed close to the plate.

People are uneasy when a woman eats alone – especially paired people.  Within the pairs, the women feel a sort of sympathetic self-conciousness.  The men feel a frisson of curiosity at the possibilities.  The women belatedly sense that the men are frissoning and resent how an empty chair increases rather than decreases  my capital, when a moment ago…